Sophos and Facebook team up

Sophos has announced a partnership with Facebook to help protect users from links that lead to malware or malicious sites.

Facebook will use SophosLabs' website reputation service along with its own security measures, to help assess whether a largely distributed link is malicious. When Facebook users click a link, Facebook consults its database of malicious URLs to check the status of the link. Starting today, SophosLabs will be feeding malicious URL intelligence into this database.

Facebook will inform Facebook users if the link they clicked on is malicious, and users will be sent to a page that offers the choice to continue at their own risk, return to the previous screen, or obtain more information on why the link was flagged as suspicious.

Mac users will also be given the option to download the free Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition from the Sophos Facebook Page as part of the Facebook AV Marketplace. Of course they will think they don't need it, as their participation in a botnet must be part of the will of Steve Jobs.